Free Republic

For years, when Republican state senators met privately in their elegant, high-ceilinged conference room in the Capitol, most senior members clustered around the room’s center table, close to Joseph L. Bruno, the majority leader. But Dean G. Skelos, the hard-driving Long Island Republican and deputy majority leader, sat in a back corner. From there, he studied the scene, taking in members’ facial expressions, their tones of voice and their reactions to other senators’ ideas. “My grandfather taught me a long time ago, be a buyer, not a seller,” said Mr. Skelos in an interview on Thursday. He added: “I like...

A bomb-laden van found on a Brooklyn street by a car thief was wired to detonate by remote control, and had likely been sitting there for more than five months... Investigators believe the homemade explosives found Thursday night in the Ford Econoline belonged to Yung Tang, 39, a Chinese national. He has been behind bars since he was caught Jan. 29 in Wallingford, Conn., with nearly identical bombs in his Mazda MPV minivan. Also found in the MPV were two silencers, four hollow-point bullets and two radio-controlled detonators. Days after that arrest, the NYPD searched his Brooklyn house and found...

New York is having a cannoli conundrum. The shell-encased treats at two of the city's top bakeries tested well above the Health Department's trans-fat limit that went into effect Tuesday, according to lab results commissioned by the Daily News. Veniero's, the popular East Village eatery where one cannoli contained trans-fat levels four times above the city limit, vowed Friday to pull the shells from the shelves until the supplier it deals with bans the bad-for-you fat. "I want to thank you for alerting me," owner Robert Zerilli said. Veniero's wasn't alone. The taboo fat was also found in a cannoli...

The owner of the World Trade Center has abandoned the timetable for rebuilding work at the site of the 9/11 attacks, saying it was "not realistic". Port Authority of New York and New Jersey executive director, Christopher Ward, listed over a dozen issues that had slowed work and raised costs. New dates for the completion of a memorial, skyscrapers and a transit hub are expected to be issued in September. It is unclear if the centrepiece Freedom Tower will now be scaled back. The tower, intended as a replacement for the destroyed Twin Towers, had been scheduled for completion in...

He's a criminal, but he "did the right thing" when it mattered - alerting cops to what he feared was a terror plot the day before the Fourth of July. At about 5 p.m. yesterday, an unidentified thief with a police record broke into a red van that had been parked at 53rd Street and Second Avenue in Brooklyn's Sunset Park for about a month, a source told The Post.

To people around the world who have seen the video, Esmin Green is a symbol of a health-care system that seems to have failed horribly. Green, 49, is shown rolling off a waiting room chair at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, on June 19. She lands face-down on the floor, convulsing. Surveillance video captures her lying on the floor for more than an hour as several hospital workers see her and appear to ignore her. She died there. But to fellow members of her church, she was known as "Sister Green." Together, they served as a family for...

We’re surprised that Sen. Chuck Schumer can keep straight which foreign countries he’s haranguing to pump more oil and which he’s haranguing to stop pumping more oil. A few weeks ago the New York senator and aspiring global Petroleum Czar was threatening to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia if it didn’t produce more oil. Now, he’s outraged that the Iraqi government may give modest no-bid service contracts to Western oil companies as a first step toward more fully exploiting the country’s vast oil reserves. Perhaps Sen. Schumer would approve if the Saudis were to agree to pump the Iraq...

City Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr. released an audit on Tuesday morning finding that the Police Department’s Manhattan Property Clerk Division had “exhibited disturbingly poor controls over weapons in its custody — with many of them initially missing.” The audit “found a stunning lack of organization, order and control,” Mr. Thompson said at a news conference in Lower Manhattan. The Property Clerk Division safeguards property, including cash, narcotics, rifles and handguns. The property is categorized as arrest evidence, materials kept for investigative or safekeeping purposes, and the property of deceased individuals. The department has established five Property Clerk Division offices,...

BELLEVUE, WA – Anti-gun New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg should “mind his own store before telling others how to operate theirs,” said the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, after an audit found that the New York Police Department lost track of dozens of guns in its own storage lockers. “While this guy has been bullying gun dealers around the country about so-called ‘slip-shod’ operations,” chuckled CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “his own police department seems to be slipping quite a bit on its own. Bloomberg needs to back off, shut up and get his own house...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A sculpture of the signing of the Declaration of Independence made from a one-tonne block of cheddar cheese glistened on the sidewalk of Times Square in New York on Thursday as an artist's tribute to the Fourth of July. "It's very patriotic, using the signing of the Declaration of Independence, bringing Americans together for the Fourth," said Troy Landwehr, who carved the sculpture for cracker company Cheez-It to celebrate U.S. Independence Day. He worked eight hours a day for a week in a 40-degree cooler carving the block of Wisconsin cheddar. "The cheddar has been pasteurized...

"Sure, the hotelier and real estate magnate Leona Helmsley left $12 million in her will to her dog, Trouble. But that, it turns out, is nothing much compared with what other dogs may receive from the charitable trust of Mrs. Helmsley, who died last August." "Her instructions, specified in a two-page “mission statement,” are that the entire trust, valued at $5 billion to $8 billion and amounting to virtually all her estate, be used for the care and welfare of dogs, according to two people who have seen the document and who described it on condition of anonymity." "Even if...

ALBEMARLE, N.C. -- A Mount Pleasant woman who works for the Albemarle Department of Motor Vehicles is charged with attempting to defraud the government by issuing identification cards to illegal immigrants.Authorities said between January 2007 and June 2008, license examiner Susan Honeycutt, 50, issued about 150 IDs to illegal immigrants using addresses that don’t exist and other fraudulent information.Federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents set up surveillance at the DMV two weeks ago. They said surveillance tape caught Honeycutt giving driver’s licenses to two illegal immigrants.Two men, Vijendra Gangadeen and Richie Seupersad, are accused of conspiring with Honeycutt. According to...

The guests file into Jeff Varasano's Buckhead home with bottles of wine, and he greets them warmly. Mostly, they're first-timers. "I've only met three of these people," says Varasano's partner, Heather Stokley, surveying the nearly two dozen eager souls who have scored an invitation to the evening's pizza tasting. "They're friends of friends, Internet friends. There's such a big list of people who want to come." Over the past two years, Varasano pizza supplicants from across the city, the state and the country have beaten a path to his oven door. Some out-of-towners have spent the night in his guest...

With the defending Republicans facing twists and turns confirming that truth can be stranger than fiction, the Democrats now appear to hold a solid edge in the battle for the seat New York Republican Rep. Vito J. Fossella left open — after the married father of three admitted in May that he has a daughter from an ongoing extramarital relationship. The Republicans’ lack of a consensus replacement candidate less than two weeks before the July 10 candidate filing deadline, with no top-tier prospects at hand for the party’s Sept. 9 primary, has prompted CQ Politics to change its rating on...

GERALD, Mo. — Like so many rural communities in the country’s middle, this small town had wrestled for years with the woes of methamphetamine. Then, several months ago, a federal agent showed up. Arrests began. Houses were ransacked. People, in handcuffs on their front lawns, named names. To some, like Mayor Otis Schulte, who considers the county around Gerald, population 1,171, “a meth capital of the United States,” the drug scourge seemed to be fading at last....

They callously ignored her. Esmin Green is seen in these infuriating images collapsing on the psychiatric emergency-room floor at Kings County Hospital - stared at by one worker, ignored by a security guard, and finally nudged by a health-care staffer on June 19. She lay there for an hour before doctors and nurses snapped to attention and tried to revive the 49-year-old Jamaica native. It was too late. The shocking video was released by lawyers suing KCH in federal court on an unrelated matter. "I heard about it and it's horrible how she died like that," said Green's landlady, Beatrice...

Despite New York's political reputation as Democratic stronghold, the head of Sen. John McCain's Empire State presidential campaign team believes the Arizona Republican can win the state, including Upstate and Western New York. Edward Cox, a partner in the New York law firm of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler and son-in-law of former President Nixon, made that prediction during a meeting at Business First.

ROMULUS NY-- A man suffered burns on 75 percent of his body after a large gas tank exploded on his Yerkes Road farm late Monday morning. Seneca County sheriff investigators said that the man, Samuel L. Byler, 25, lit a match near a 175-gallon fuel tank on his farm at 2081 Yerkes Road, igniting vapors inside and causing it to explode about 11:30 a.m. Byler, who suffered burns on much of his body, was treated at the scene by EMTs and then transported by Mercy Flight to Strong Memorial Hospital, where he was listed in guarded condition this morning in...

It didn't take many calls over the weekend to leave us with the impression that Mayor Bloomberg is mistaken in his assertion that the Supreme Court's decision on the right to keep a gun is not going to have an impact on New York's regulation of guns. It is true that the Supreme Court ruled on only one case, ordering the District of Columbia to issue a permit to Dick Heller to enable him to keep his pistol in his home. But the interpretation that the court gave to the Second Amendment — that it is an individual, civil right...

When the case of District of Columbia v. Heller was before the Supreme Court, Mayor Bloomberg filed a brief in support of the District's handgun ban, arguing that a militia-only interpretation of the Second Amendment was necessary to keep New York City's gun laws intact. On Thursday, when the Supreme Court ruled against Mr. Bloomberg's position, the mayor claimed that the ruling was a "benefit" and would not affect any New York City laws. His claim was half-right. It is a benefit, but it's unlikely that it will not affect any New York City laws. In most of America, Heller...

The Supreme Court's gun ruling is driving a wedge through the ranks of Mayor Bloomberg's Coalition of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. As mayors from across the country denounced the decision to overturn the Washington, D.C., ban on handguns, Mr. Bloomberg issued a statement saying it would "benefit" his coalition, and predicted it would have no impact on the city's regulation of handguns. His remarks were a sharp departure from those made by mayors Richard Daley of Chicago and Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, both prominent members of the coalition whose cities' gun laws have been targeted by the National Rifle...

You could have taken a nostalgic drive through the past on Thursday night, through the dreamy green landscape at the outer edges of the Catskills, past sleepy fishing towns like Roscoe and Downsville, to the lovingly restored Walton Theater, built in 1914 for vaudeville acts, honored guests like Theodore Roosevelt and community events of all shapes and sizes. And, if you got there, you would have received a distinctly less dreamy glimpse of the future. You would have heard an overheated mix of fear and greed, caution and paranoia, of million-dollar gas leases that could enrich struggling farmers, of polluted...

New York is set to spend $600 million in taxpayer dollars on stem cell research. A recently released draft plan drooling over the potential of embryonic cells to cure a variety of diseases has drawn this blast from Rev. Ruben Diaz, the state senate's sole pro-life Democrat: June 13, 2008Judy Doesschate, J.D.Director of Board OperationsWadsworth CenterNew York State Department of HealthEmpire State Plaza, Box 509Albany, NY 12208-0509Dear Ms. Doesschate:This letter is to express my response to the Empire State Stem Cell Board’s strategic framework that will guide New York State’s $600 Million, 11-year investment in stem cell research. The...

(FIXING THE LITTLE THINGS MADE NEW YORK CITY SAFE. THEY'RE STARTING TO BREAK AGAIN.) Does it feel some days as if New York-- wealthy, successful, seemingly at the top of the world -- is slipping back into the bad old days of crime, noise, dirt, rudeness? Like pentimento rising from an old canvas, the traces of New York's previous misery are appearing on the streets and in the subways -- graffiti, aggressive panhandling, open drug dealing, filthy public areas, ear--splitting noise, screeching sirens, a sense of disorder we thought was gone. It's not "Soylent Green" again, but the old Hollywood...

Spitzer "actually enjoyed destroying people," said a former NYSE managing director, Richard Riker. "Spitzer's legacy is tarnished and trashed because of [the prostitution scandal that led to his resignation] and the Richard Grasso lawsuit suit." "[The Court of Appeals decision upholding Grasso's pay package] becomes part of the realization that Spitzer was no more than a legal lightweight who bullied and slashed his way through Wall Street using the power of his office," Riker said. Spitzer's personal reputation was already in tatters. Revelations that Spitzer had a years-long addiction to high-priced prostitutes - and that he might be indicted himself...

If New York’s commissioner of education, Richard Mills, is to be believed, one of the great success stories in the history of American public education is unfolding in the Empire State. The commissioner has released 2008 state test results showing that a stunning 97 percent of the 708 third-graders in upstate Warren County are achieving “proficiency” in math. Only five of the county’s third-graders scored at level 1, defined by the test protocol as reflecting “serious academic difficulties.” The state’s other third-graders aren’t doing quite as terrifically as those in Warren County, but they’re pretty close—with 90 percent demonstrating proficiency...

YONKERS (WABC) -

ALBANY — Again and again when he appeared before a state ethics commission last year, a top aide to Gov. Eliot Spitzer tried to explain that he had told the governor about steps he was taking to gather the travel records of Joseph L. Bruno, then the Senate majority leader. But the commission’s executive director kept changing the subject and did not want to hear about Mr. Spitzer’s involvement, says the aide, Darren Dopp. In his first extended interview about the case, Mr. Dopp said this week that he was refusing to reach a settlement with the ethics commission, known...

NY-24: Arcuri Tied to Spitzer Prostitution Scandal Former Fundraiser Under Federal Investigation By Bluey Posted in Congress | Freshman Rep. Michael Arcuri (D-N.Y.) paid $44,000 to a political consultant who is under federal investigation as part of the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal. The story first broke on a blog in Arcuri's hometown of Utica, N.Y., and is now leading the news in the Upstate New York city.

Michelle Obama speaks to gay Democrats NEW YORK - Michelle Obama won a standing ovation on Thursday when she paid a campaign visit to gay and lesbian Democratic activists to promote her husband Barack Obama’s presidential quest. Obama, appearing at a dinner meeting of the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Council of the Democratic National Committee, cited her husband’s efforts to fight discrimination and promote equal rights for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people. She said he supported a complete repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which only recognizes marriages between men and women and upholds states’...

Michelle Obama, wife of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, pledged to the city’s gay community Thursday night that her husband will campaign for gay equality. The Illinois senator's wife addressed a fundraising dinner in Turtle Bay, Manhattan for the Democratic National Committee's Gay and Lesbian Leadership Council. She cited her husband’s push for anti-discrimination legislation in Illinois. Michelle Obama also added that her husband wants equal treatment for any relationship recognized under state law. Meanwhile, the presidential candidates weighed in on the Supreme Court's Thursday decision to overturn Washington, D.C.'s handgun ban. Stumping in Cincinnati Thursday, John McCain expressed support...

They are the citizen soldiers, not career military. They are the ones who leave jobs and homes - and families - to serve their nation and the cause of freedom. They answer when called. And sometimes they die. This week, the family of New York lost two more heroes: Sgt. Andrew Seabrooks (top), 36, of South Ozone Park, and Spec. Anthony Mangano, 36, of Greenlawn, L.I. (posthumously promoted to sergeant). Members of the 2nd Squadron, 101st Cavalry, New York Army National Guard, they were killed Saturday when a roadside bomb demolished their armored vehicle in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The military said...

Former U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton ruled out the possibility on Tuesday that she would seek the vice presidential post in a Barack Obama administration. "I am not seeking any other position," the New York senator said during her first public appearance since she suspended her campaign on June 7. "You know, it is not something that I think about. This is totally Senator Obama's decision and that's the way it should be," she told reporters at the Senate. However, it is a U.S. political tradition for potential VP candidates to deny their intentions to seek the position...

New York, NY (AHN) - Taliban militants have earned an estimated $100 million from "taxes" generated from farmers growing poppies for the opium trade in Afghanistan, the head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said Tuesday. Acosta said the earnings do not include money coming from other opium-related activities. He said the extremists may have earned more in protecting laboratories and the transport of the illegal drug. He told the BBC, "One is protection to laboratories and the other is that the insurgents offer protection to cargo, moving opium across the border." The U.N. estimates...

Here’s the statement Joe Bruno just issued regarding his decision not to seek re-election in November: ”Today, I met with my Republican colleagues in the Senate and informed them that I will not be running for re-election this November. “After 32 years in office, I have decided that it is time to move on with my life and to give my constituents an opportunity for new representation and my colleagues in the Senate who have supported me, an opportunity for new leadership. “Public service has been a blessing for which I will be ever grateful. I have had the opportunity...

Teachers College at Columbia University is suspending indefinitely Madonna Constantine, a professor who claimed she was the victim of a hate crime after an investigation began into allegations that she committed plagiarism. In a letter sent out yesterday to Teachers College faculty, the college president, Susan Fuhrman, and dean, Thomas James, said the faculty advisory committee had rejected Ms. Constantine's appeal of the plagiarism charges. They said Ms. Constantine was suspended as of yesterday but that she is entitled to appeal the decision or request a hearing before the faculty executive committee. RELATED: The Letter to Faculty (pdf). The letter,...

We can't tell you her name but she was able to tell a jury about what happened to her. And her determination to recount some of the most incredible savagery ever heard in a courtroom is testimony to her courage and her desire to see justice done. The recall of a Columbia University student that unfolded in a New York City hall of justice on Monday was almost too hard to hear. The 24-year-old victim sat in the witness box with her jaw clenched and her mind focused, as she retold the unimaginable ordeal she claims she suffered at the...

As Senator Barack Obama courted voters in Iowa last December, Representative Keith Ellison, the country’s first Muslim congressman, stepped forward eagerly to help. Mr. Ellison ...volunteered to speak on Mr. Obama’s behalf at a mosque in Cedar Rapids, one of the nation’s oldest Muslim enclaves. But before the rally could take place, aides to Mr. Obama asked Mr. Ellison to cancel the trip because it might stir controversy. Another aide appeared at Mr. Ellison’s Washington office to explain. “I will never forget the quote,” Mr. Ellison said, leaning forward in his chair as he recalled the aide’s words. “He said,...

ALBANY, N.Y. _ Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, who has run the Republican chamber for more than a dozen years, confirmed Monday that he won't seek re-election in the fall.

...they take lingering looks at Douglass’s teachers and administrators as they work and at its students as they, more often than not, don’t work. Though eventually the Raymonds (just barely) take sides — they seem not to be fans of Mr. Bush’s program — their dismaying film isn’t really asking whether No Child Left Behind can help Douglass. It’s asking whether anything can. The film finds a few success stories among the school’s 1,100 students, but it is filled largely with teenagers who are drowning in apathy and attitude, those who seem well beyond any “To Sir With Love”-style rescue....

Supreme Court Denies Eminent Domain Petition From Owners & Tenants Facing Property Seizures for Atlantic Yards 11 Property Owners and Tenants Will Take Their Case to NY State Court To Challenge the Improper Use of Eminent Domain Under New York State Law BROOKLYN, NY--The United States Supreme Court denied the petition to grant a hearing (cert petition) to eleven property owners and tenants who asked the court to hear their appeal on the Second Circuit Court’s dismissal of their challenge to the use of eminent domain for Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards development proposal in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. The petition...

The United States has a long and dishonorable history of dumping the least-qualified teachers into schools that serve poor and minority students....The picture has improved significantly, however, in New York City, where state law has abolished temporary licenses for uncertified teachers, raised standards in teacher preparation programs and spawned innovative strategies for recruiting better teachers. [snip]...The qualification index took into account several factors, including certification, experience, the teacher’s SAT scores and the rank of the undergraduate college the teacher attended....Higher salaries have clearly played a role in strengthening the city’s teacher corps. But the state kicked off the quality movement...

NEW YORK (CBS) ― A dwarf charged with prostituting an underage runaway will appear in Kings County Supreme Court on Monday. Jacqueline Green, a.k.a. 'Shorty,'due to her 3 foot 9 inch height, is charged with promoting prostitution and child endangerment for allegedly pimping a 15-year-old that ran away from a troubled home. According to published reports, Green is accused of using her Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment as a sex pad for clients who paid $250 per half-hour for intercourse, and $100 per half-hour of oral sex. Clients were found using Craigslist. Green, 26, pleaded not guilty to all charges. The teenage girl...

Frank Powers, the wealthy Wall Street retiree tapped to run for disgraced Rep. Vito Fossella's congressional seat, died Sunday- sending shock waves through the already reeling state GOP. News of Powers' fatal heart attack had many party insiders wondering if Fossella would change his mind and run again - but he quickly moved to quash the speculation. "Congressman Fossella will not be seeking re-election," said a Fossella aide. Powers, a 68-year-old MTA board member, philanthropist and father of seven, died at home early Sunday, relatives said.

An antique cherry wood chair scorched to its springs by a fireball inside a Battery Park City apartment. Family letters and wedding invitations miraculously recovered from the rubble. A $2 bill pulled from a victim's bruised wallet that finally convinced his wife he was never coming home. These are the everyday objects of Sept. 11, 2001, all of which will end up in the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

The Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network has 36 chapters across the country but has mostly failed to register in states that require nonprofits to file public records, The Post has learned. Only two chapters, those in Washington state and Nevada, have registered with the appropriate agency. NAN chapters in Georgia, Florida, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Illinois solicit donations, according to their Web sites or representatives - but neither the chapters nor their New York-based parent are registered to do so in those states. [Snip] NAN's failure to file paperwork regarding its regional chapters comes as Sharpton and his nonprofit...

A Thursday afternoon meeting between Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus grew tense and emotional for a moment -- perhaps illustrating that weeks after Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., suspended her presidential campaign, some nerves remain frayed. Sources at the meeting said that Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, a Clinton supporter, expressed the desire that Obama and his campaign would reach out the millions of women still aggrieved about what happened in the campaign and still disappointed that Clinton lost. Obama then said, "However, I need to make a decision in the next few months...

Truckers in Albany protested at the New York Capitol amidst concerns their industry would be hit hard by skyrocketing fuel prices and climate change legislation. About 100 truckers attended the demonstration, where they paraded big rigs past the Capitol building and blasted their horns. They’re specifically directing their anger at Democrat-controlled State Assembly for refusing a vote on a proposed gas tax holiday bill to suspend New York’s fuel tax through Labor Day. The truckers even invited Democratic Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno for a ride on one of their big rigs to lobby him.

Let the little people pay higher gas taxes. That was the harsh message for beleaguered motorists delivered yesterday by Mayor Bloomberg. With drivers around the country fuming about rising gas prices, Bloomberg dropped a bombshell into their tanks yesterday by calling for increased fuel taxes to cut consumption.

Big corporations give him money. Presidential candidates seek his endorsement. He has influential friends in Congress and the governor's mansion.  The Rev. Al Sharpton has emerged over the past decade as perhaps the nation's most prominent civil rights leader, a status that was demonstrated again this week when he led protests against police brutality that briefly shut down six of Manhattan's major bridges and tunnels.   But he still carries baggage from his early days as a fire-breathing agitator: Government records obtained by The Associated Press indicate that Sharpton and his business entities owe nearly $1.5 million in overdue taxes...